The Midnight Room
by Rowen Hashiba Of Tenku Co
Summary: One of the Reikai Tantei dies, and their world is thrown into chaos...
1. Secrets and Lies

Secrets and Lies  
By Youko Alexandra  
Part One Of The Midnight Room Series  
  
A/N: I'm back with a new kind of YYH fic- for me, anyway. An angsty little piece. Probably a one-shot, but if I get enough reviews I might follow it up.  
NOTE: "sayanora wa mirai no hajimari" means "goodbye is the beginning of the future".  
  
  
++++++++SECRETS AND LIES+++++++++++  
  
She watched him as he lay, helpless, on the bed. She could not help him, she hadn't been able to. Her ruby eyes filled with tears at the sight of him.  
Slowly he raised one hand to his stomach, and gave a bitter half-smile.  
"There's.. a lot of blood.. isn't there?" He speaks slowly, as though with great effort. A single tear escaped his eye, sliding down his cheek to land on the bedspread, which in the area around his stomach and lower chest was covered in blood.  
She just about lost it right then and there, started crying, but she didn't. She knew that if she did she would never be able to stop crying.  
"Why are you.. so sad..?" He asked her, and then she lost control of herself. The tears came and trailed down her cheeks, sobs beginning to overtake her.  
"I'm sad because you're..." She trailed off into sobs again. His red eyes, usually so indifferent, registered sympathy and, perhaps, regret.  
"Don't be sad.. because of me.." He told her finally, his voice soft and kind, so different from his usual tone. "I promised that I'd help you... find your.. brother.."  
That was how it had all started. When she had asked him to help her find her brother. Then, while looking for a man they thought might have information, they had been attacked by an S-class monster who wanted to sell her teargems. He had protected her, gotten both of them back to this place, but this was the price of it.  
"I didn't want you to die for me!" She almost shouted. Her sadness and frustration were adding up. She didn't want him to die, no..  
"I'll be... fine.." He replied stubbornly. "Just need... rest.."  
She took his hand in hers and gripped it tight, as much to reassure him as to reassure her. He squeezed back weakly.  
"I found.. your brother..." He said after a moment. She stared at him. He was dying, but yet he still found it important to tell her who her brother was?  
He smiled slightly, the smile of a man who would die happy. The smile of a man who knew that he was dying and was determined to take it in good humor. Or perhaps he was simply smiling at the irony of the situation. She would never know for sure why he smiled like that.  
Another breathless moment later, he reached up with one hand and touched her cheek, brushing away a tear as he did so.  
"Hiei-san..?"  
He blinked at her slowly, and she was surprised to see that his ruby eyes were filled with tears.  
"Now.. I'm.. sad.." He told her, and now he was smiling and crying at the same time, and his voice was hoarse. She became quite sure that he was going to die now. All she could do was make him comfortable while it happened.  
"Don't be sad, Hiei-san.. you'll be fine.." She knew that he knew that she was lying to him, but she didn't want to worry him. She wanted to reassure him, give him a little love in the last moments of his life.  
"No.. I won't.." He said frankly, but he was still smiling and he was still crying. "Don't lie.. to me.."  
"Hiei-san, please, don't go.." She sobbed, "don't leave me.."  
"Yukina-chan.. sayanora wa.. mirai no hajimari.." He said slowly, "I won't ever leave you.."  
"But you're leaving me right now, Hiei-san...! Please don't go!" She knew her crying was useless. She knew it was too late.  
"I will never leave you... sister.."  
And then he was gone. 


	2. Souls and Spirits

Souls and Spirits  
By Youko Alexandra  
Sequel to Secrets and Lies  
Part Two Of The Midnight Room Series  
  
A/N: The sequel is here. This is a Kurama fic. Angsty. Possibly hints of shounen-ai (Kurama/Hiei), depending on how much you like the couple and how you interpret the fic. Hope you like it!  
Note also: Warning, a kind of Kurama/Yukina fic.. go figure. I think they're cute together.  
  
**********SOULS AND SPIRITS************  
  
He felt the shattering in his soul at the same time he felt his best friend's ki dissappear.  
"Kurama, what's wrong?" Yusuke asked. Kurama couldn't answer.  
He nearly fell over, the pain in his heart and mind was too great. It burned like a fire.  
"Hiei.." He managed to choke out. "Hiei's ki is gone."  
Yusuke didn't react well to this at all. "What do you mean Hiei's ki is gone?"  
"He's gone, he's gone." Kurama repeated it a few times, standing there in the middle of the kitchen, tears streaming down his face, green eyes half-closed. "He's gone."  
"Gone as in.." Yusuke paused before continuing, "dead..?"  
Kurama nodded weakly. He leaned against the counter for support, sobs wracking his body even as he didn't want to cry. Hiei would've smacked him for crying like this.  
Dimly he wondered if Hiei would have cried if he had died.  
"Where's the shrimp at?"  
Oh, dammit Kuwabara, Yusuke thought, now is NOT the time.  
Too late. Kurama ran off in the direction where he had last felt Hiei's ki, leaving Yusuke and Kuwabara far behind.  
  
She didn't move when the door of the shack opened. Nor did she acknowledge Kurama's prescense. Her forehead leaned against her brother's cold hand, and she could see the turqoise tear-gems she had cried. There were many of them.  
Kurama's own, liquid tears joined hers on the bed as he saw his ravaged friend's corpse.  
"Gods, what happened to him..?" Kurama asked her in a strangely hoarse voice. She did not reply.  
Their silence together in mourning was almost a physical thing. Their sadness was together. They were together, mourning for a lost love, a lost friend, a lost brother.  
"He was helping me.." She finally spoke, her voice raspy, as though she had not used it for a long time. "He was helping me.. it's my fault.. it's my fault he died.."  
"It's no one's fault." Kurama wiped futilely at his eyes with his shirt-sleeve as he spoke. "No one wanted him to go. It's no one's fault."  
He put a hand on her shoulder, and both of them were crying. They were one in their misery.  
After a while Kurama looked at the sky through the window. He pointed out it so Yukina would look.  
"Now his soul is in Heaven, and his spirit is here.. he will always be with us, Yukina-chan. Always." Kurama didn't know why he had felt compelled to use the suffix "-chan" with Yukina, but it seemed right. They had a bond now. They were bonded by sadness and death.  
"He promised that he would never leave me.." Yukina sobbed, "he said that he would always be with me.. he is my brother, Kurama! My brother! I was looking for him all this time and he was right here and I.. never.. knew.."  
She trailed off into sobs again.  
"He told me once," Kurama got a faraway look in his eyes at the memory, "that he made a promise never to tell you that he was your brother.. he couldn't tell you, Yukina. That's why he didn't say it. But I know that he loved you.. He used to dream of ways to tell you without breaking his promise, ways to let you know.. but he never did, because he thought that you would hate him for who he was, for how cruel he was.."  
"I could never hate him!" Her sobs took her over again, and she and Kurama cried together for a long while.  
And then, when the sun rose once again, and all their tears were dry, they set off to tell the others what had happened. 


End file.
